A fan of horror films. Gorehounds are typically drawn to slasher movies centered on young people of dubious moral quality who attempt to escape a menacing villain with stabbing or hacking weapons. If the villain is animalistic, he will kill or consume his victims without instruments. The gorehound is allured by the spectacle of violence and the desperate escape of the remaining characters confronted with a hopeless situation.

The films enjoyed by the Gorehound are usually considered medicore by critics. This mediocrity may stem from an absence of character background, unconvincing special effects, gratuitous nudity, and perhaps most famously, outrageously poor judgment by surviving characters. Such characters will often attempt to escape an eerie set of circumstances by confining themselves to an unfamiliar rural residence, often owned by the villain, seeming to fear exposure to nature more than murder.

"Gorehound" is considered by some to be a misnomer, because such fans may value a film's violence only as precondition to the euphoria of escape. Under this analysis, gore is necessary but incidental to the higher pleasure of freedom from one's pursuer.

Gorehounds are often the subject of feminist critique, since their preferred films usually involve extreme violence against women. Some, however, have noted that films preferred by the gorehound almost invariably center on a heroine who triumphs over enormous physical and mental hardship and ultimately bests her attacker. In this sense, the gorehound may be celebrating female cunning and courage.

My friend, the world's biggest gorehound, has seen so many horror movies about cannibals in the Deep South that he refuses to travel in rural ares out of fear for his safety.